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What's Next for Amanda & Raffaele • Jeffrey Havard Update • Nyki Kish Appeal Outcome • Kirstin Lobato Update Injustice Anywhere Newsletter Spring 2014 What’s Next For Amanda & Raffaele Jeffrey Havard Update Nyki Kish Appeal Outcome Kirstin Lobato Update The Future For Debra Milke Does Innocence Matter In The Jamie Snow Case? Our New Featured Cases Injustice Anywhere Network May 6, 2014 By Bruce Fischer Injustice Anywhere is pleased to publish our second newsletter. We have come a long way, thanks to an amazing group of dedicated volunteers, but we still have a long way to go. With your help we can achieve our goals. Please take time to review our eight featured cases highlighted in this newsletter. Our organization has done extensive research on these cases, and great care has been taken when deciding where to direct our efforts. We also encourage you to visit the Injustice Anywhere Forum. Our forum members discuss a wide range of topics involving wrongful convictions. Be sure to listen to our recent Injustice Anywhere Radio broadcast. We highlighted our featured cases, giving an up to date review of each case. In recent months we have had one featured case end in success, and we have added two new featured cases. You can listen to all of our shows in the archive. We would like to thank everyone that contributes to Injustice Anywhere, and we encourage Injustice Anywhere supporters to distribute this newsletter. We understand the challenges some may face when attempting to start a conversation about a wrongful conviction case. This newsletter is a great way to tell your friends and family about our organization, and may help to open the door to further conversation about a case or cases that you are interested in. 1 Injustice Anywhere Newsletter Spring 2014 Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito In December of 2009, Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito were wrongfully convicted for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Both were declared innocent on appeal and were released from prison in 2011. The Italian Supreme Court overturned the acquittals in 2013, and guilty verdicts were reinstated in January of this year. Amanda and Raffaele will now appeal their case to the Italian Supreme Court. What’s Next For Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox By Karen Pruett Raffaele and Amanda have battled against the Italian criminal justice system since their arrest on November 6, 2007, and the fact remains that there never has been hard evidence against either university student. The real killer, a local burglar named Rudy Guede, left evidence all over Meredith Kercher, her bedroom (the murder scene) and the apartment she shared with three other women, including Amanda. Rather than quick justice for an easy-to-solve murder the world witnessed an example of the abuses rained down upon the Italian people from a 1989 Reform of their legal system. This reform created a new position in the judiciary, Public Prosecutor, and gave that person complete control over the Investigative Phase of a crime. But in practice giving one person so much power opens the door for abuse and the Italian system is rife with examples of the public prosecutors pandering to favorite lawyers, plaintiffs or defendants. Attorneys on the “opposing” side suffered as well, often walking a fine line so they didn’t become defendants themselves fighting a trumped up charge. In Amanda and Raffaele’s situation they became the victims of manipulated evidence and their lawyers are walking that fine line. Not only that, but the Defense has been denied access to a semen-stained pillowcase, computer hard drives and DNA records since 2007. First the Perugian courts and then the Florentine court denied them due process. Theirs is a textbook example of what the Italian people face everyday. Perugia’s then Public Prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, conducted the 2007 investigation into Meredith Kercher’s murder and his own public record shows decades of abusing the inviolable rights of Perugian citizens and foreigners. He is fully aware that if factually incorrect paperwork is filed during an investigation it becomes literally “set in stone” if the judges agree with him, as demonstrated with Raffaele and Amanda’s 2008 pre-trial and 2009 First Instance trial. Like a boulder rolling downhill, it becomes easier and faster to pass the case along uncorrected. Meredith Kercher’s murder investigation illustrated every attribute of Mignini’s past behaviors and while most outsiders thought that the thinly veiled duplicity was obvious, we were stunned when Italy’s highest courts chose ignore an investigation that was as fraudulent as it was insidious. It became clear that the high courts will not or cannot amend factually incorrect case files leading to the frightening understanding that citizens and foreigners alike could be at the mercy of official corruption. The 2011 Appeal is, so far, the only court who found a way to side-step this popularity contest to get at the truth. It paid careful attention to the law and released the defendants when it was concluded that the evidence against them should never have been entered into court record in the first place. Rudy Guede’s DNA did not belong in Meredith’s bedroom, there is no evidence of other perpetrators, therefore he alone killed her. That is painfully obvious. Two judges out of more than twenty adhered to Italy’s laws which demonstrates the strength of the prosecution’s “Current,” a type of political party within the Italian judicial system. This powerful “Current” has favored the prosecution all levels, criminal and civil, except during the First Appeal. At all but one trial the court ignored the scientifically supported fact that neither defendant has any hard evidence against them. 2 Injustice Anywhere Newsletter Spring 2014 Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox (continued) Amanda Knox & Raffaele Sollecito On April 29th, Judge Alessandro Nencini released his Motivation Document explaining his reasoning for the guilty verdicts. The document is currently being translated and should be available in English shortly. Not surprisingly, translated excerpts already show that Nencini’s report works to add more illogical conclusions to the Mt. Everest of factually incorrect information in the case file. During the summer of 2014 the Defense will file an appeal. Once again they will ask for long-denied access to evidence and tell the court that the defendants where not present when Rudy Guede killed Meredith Kercher. Once again they will say that the interrogations of the innocent students were coercive and prejudiced. In the fall of 2014, the date for the Supreme Court hearing will be announced, and it will likely convene in Rome in early 2015. The Supreme Court will make a final decision on the litigation or send it back down to the appeal level for another review. But this case has become a popularity contest and with the prosecutor’s party wearing the crown, some expect the highest court in the land to bow to the lowest court’s original decision citing the inability to correct mistakes. I guess the Supreme Court is not powerful enough to fix the mess a simple prosecutor made, how about that? A final “guilty” ruling would mean that Raffaele could go back to prison while the system completely destroys his life; his assets will be seized. And even if the system frees him a month or year later, he would emerge from prison with his reputation and finances in ruins. A promising life burned at the stake of Vanity and Avarice. Amanda would become a fugitive if the final ruling is “guilty” and at some point Italy could make the decision to seek her extradition. Both the American judiciary and State Department would review Amanda’s case after a formal request from Italy, but the final decision would rest with the State Department. It’s highly unlikely that she would be simply handed over because of the prejudicial treatment by the Italian court system. Her fugitive status would mean she would not be able to travel in any country with an extradition treaty with Italy, effectively cutting her off from Europe and her family in Germany. An appeal gives both Meredith’s family and the defendants another chance to find justice. In Italy cases can bounce between the Supreme Court and the Appeal level several times. Italian film star Sophia Loren won a tax evasion case in 2013; it had been in the system for 40 years. It’s easy to see how defendants can be financially devastated and their cases end in attrition or prison or both due to no fault of their own. Ideally the Supreme Court could end this farce by doing a few simple things. First request a third appeal and ask for a complete review of all the evidence, including the contested and long-denied items. Do an Osmotic Evaluation, then do Reverse Osmosis and present only the hard evidence to the court. By simply allowing Italian law to work without hindrance I think the resulting ruling would be in everyone’s best interests. The Kercher’s will know the full truth surrounding Meredith’s tragic death. Amanda and Raffaele will be exonerated. Rudy Guede will serve a full prison sentence for taking Meredith’s life. Then, one can only hope, the Supreme Court would open an investigation into the behavior of the Perugian authorities who fraudulently cost the Italian taxpayers millions and caused the needless suffering of three innocent families. 3 Injustice Anywhere Newsletter Spring 2014 Raffaele Sollecito and Amanda Knox (continued) Meredith Kercher Meredith Kercher’s family, firmly on the side of the prosecution, is happy with the guilty verdicts. They have long held the belief that Meredith’s friends were involved in her death but all they really want is justice for her.
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